


Did You Truly Know Fear, Before?

by popsicletheduck



Series: Fear of a Witcher [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: ADHD Jaskier, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Mind Control, Not A Lot Of Plot, Panic Attacks, Torture, Whump, but yknow. heavy on the hurt light on the comfort, internalized witcher racism, its barely mentioned but thats my headcanon and im sticking to it, lot of pain, sorta not too terribly intense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsicletheduck/pseuds/popsicletheduck
Summary: Jaskier had been getting himself into trouble long before he started trailing after Geralt. But when one of Geralt’s contracts took them to a town Jaskier swore never to set foot in again, he’ll soon learn that absolutely nothing is more trouble, or more terrifying, than a witcher.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Fear of a Witcher [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619665
Comments: 35
Kudos: 1051





	Did You Truly Know Fear, Before?

**Author's Note:**

> If you're here for interesting plot, I have bad news.  
> If you're here to see Jaskier get the absolute shit beat out of him, I have great news.  
> If there's a whump version of pwp, this is it. Just enough plot to stick everything together and not a drop more. Because sometimes you love a bard and his witcher so much you just gotta make em suffer.

Jaskier wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t. Forgetful, perhaps. Easily distracted. By a lot of things. Almost anything, really. Recently it had been his latest ballad, another rousing tale of the White Wolf’s heroic deeds, except for some reason he couldn’t get it right. He was working on it all the time, picking through chords as he trailed along behind Roach, scribbling down rhymes by firelight at night. It was important and it wasn’t working and he couldn’t think of anything else.

Which was perhaps why they were only half a day’s travel outside their destination before Jaskier thought to ask where they were going.

Geralt grunted, annoyed. Possibly he’d answered this question before. “Lestovo. The lord there says he’s got a problem with a wraith of some kind.”

Jaskier could’ve sworn that his heart actually skipped a beat. He almost stopped dead in his tracks and practically stumbled over his feet to keep walking.

Lestovo. Oh gods fuck it all why were they going to _Lestovo_? Of all places?

He considered his options, fingers picking through minor chords and sharp edged runs. He could try and circumvent Lestovo, meet up with Geralt on the other side. But Jaskier didn’t really trust himself going anywhere without a road to follow; he was just as likely to get lost as find the road again. Yes, even though the terrain here was mostly flat, covered in grasses dried by the summer sun and the very occasional tree, he would still find a way to get lost. Truly it was a talent.

He could turn around, head back to the last place they’d passed through. But that place had been tiny, barely big enough to have an inn, and it was days behind them. Plus, then he’d lose track of Geralt, because there was no way the witcher would come back for him.

Which left his only option going to Lestovo and trying to hide. Keep his head down, not get recognized, and follow Geralt out of town at the soonest possibility. It would only be a couple days, two, maybe three at the max. He could do it. It would mean tightening his belt for a bit without the opportunity to make a few coins playing, but he would survive. He couldn’t say the same if Godefri figured out he was back in town.

Jaskier’s fingers faltered on their trill as he remembered the last time he was in Lestovo. The winter sun in frozen mocking brightness overhead, his feet pounding against the dirt road as he ran, heart hammering in his chest in time to match the lute case thudding against his back. The last memory of a kiss lingering against his lips.

It had been worth it, gods it had been worth it. Or it would have been, if he never set foot in the town again. Which he was going to do.

Bollocks.

The town solidified on the horizon as the sun dipped lower in the sky, twilight already darkening the edges. It was exactly as Jaskier remembered, the ramshackle and crumbling wall, the pitched points of roofs beyond, and in the center, too grand by half, the lord’s manor. An entirely unremarkable town in an entirely unremarkable part of the Continent. Burned into his memory with all the force that fear could create.

It was dark by the time they arrived, which Jaskier could only be grateful for. Between that and using Roach as a living shield, he was reasonably sure no one got a good look at him in the streets.

Geralt looked at him strangely when he ducked into their room at the inn near as soon as the coin had traded hands.

“No songs tonight, bard?” he asked, following behind.

“Even a musician as accomplished as me gets tired sometimes, you know. Especially after following around after you through the dust all day. I’m going to take full advantage of having an actual bed for once, and you should to. Wouldn’t do not to be rested before you have to go take care of whatever nasty beastie Godefri has waiting for you.”

Geralt only grunted in reply, but something strange sparked in his eye. Jaskier chose to ignore it. He had enough on his plate with the whole trying-not-to-die thing. The unusual habits of witchers would have to wait.

The problem with staying in hiding, Jaskier was very quickly finding out, was that it was _boring_. He paced and paced and paced the little room at the inn, the sound of his feet against the floor the only accompaniment to his humming. He didn’t even dare play his lute for fear of someone hearing it and asking too many questions. The song he’d been working on for days now no longer seemed so pressing. So instead he had picked the longest and most complicated ballad he knew and was half humming, half singing it to himself.

Geralt had already left for Godefri’s manor, which had earned Jaskier another strange look when he’d elected to stay at the inn instead of following. Maybe when this whole thing was over and Lestovo was disappearing behind them Jaskier would explain. Or maybe not, Geralt didn’t tell him everything so why should he? Besides, it wasn’t exactly the kind of story that was worthy of song or even a retelling.

Jaskier had just hit about midway in his ballad, where the hero was at his lowest before the eventual grand climb to glory and honor, when the door to the room slammed open and Geralt stalked through.

“Geralt! I didn’t expect you back so soon. Already finished off the monster in time for lunch?”

Geralt growled, and it wasn’t his normal growl of irritated frustration. Jaskier wasn’t stupid, and he’d picked up a thing or two about Geralt’s moods in the time they’d traveled together. And currently, Geralt wasn’t annoyed. He was _furious_.

“We’re leaving,” he snarled, and without even giving Jaskier a moment to compose himself, grabbed him by the back of his jerkin and more or less bodily dragged him out to the stables.

“Geralt? What happened with the wraith? What’s going on? I mean, not that I’m not glad to be moving on, for once, but- hey!”

His nervous rambling was cut short as the witcher threw him into Roach’s saddle. 

“Ride,” he said.

Normally, Jaskier would’ve been thrilled at the prospect of getting a chance to ride instead of trailing along behind. Normally Geralt didn’t look at him like he wanted to strangle him right then and there. Normally he couldn’t feel his pulse pounding in his throat.

“As much as the very generous offer is very much appreciated, I really do think it would be best if-”

“ _Ride._ ”

Jaskier rode.

He rode, but he couldn’t slow his thudding heart, couldn’t unclench his hands, slick with sweat, from around Roach’s reins, couldn’t stop his mouth from running.

With a sudden sick jolt, he realized where Geralt was leading him. Somehow, the fear doubled until Jaskier felt it was smothering him.

“Geralt, I really don’t think this is a good idea.” His voice was too high, his throat too tight, his blood humming alight in his veins. He made to swing himself off Roach, only to be stopped by the sharp prick of sharpened steel against his side.

“You can ride to Lord Godefri’s manor with whatever’s left of your dignity,” Geralt growled, just loud enough for him to hear, “or I can run this dagger through you right here and now and we’ll both leave disappointed.”

Jaskier rode, certain each painful, rasping breath would be his last.

The kick hit him square in the stomach and Jaskier retched, stinging bile mixing with the blood already dripping down his chin as his whole body shuddered. Geralt grabbed him by his hair, wrenching his head back and leaving him choking and coughing.

“What the fuck are you?” the witcher repeated, poison yellow eyes flickering with hatred in the torchlight. Geralt had dragged him through the manor, down to this awful little cell. And then the beating had started. “You’ve been following me around for months now. What are you? Werewolf? Vampire?”

“Geralt, please,” Jaskier sputtered, “Human, I’m-”

The force of the punch sent him toppling to the ground, fresh crimson dripping onto the stone. Gasping, trying to regain his breath, Jaskier watched the witcher’s boots stop right in front of his face. Closing his eyes Jaskier tried to prepare himself for the crack of a broken nose, but instead Geralt grabbed his chin, levering him halfway upright.

“You’re going to tell me what you are and what exactly you’ve been waiting for while you pranced after me like a lost puppy, or things are going to get much, much worse for you.” The words were quiet and final and Jaskier felt their ice cold chill drip along his spine.

“Something’s wrong, please, Geralt, I’m just a bard.” Desperate tears pricked his eyes. “I’m just Jaskier.”

The smile that crept across Geralt’s face was nothing short of feral. “The hard way it is, then.”

It was like waking from sleep while already being awake, half forgotten thoughts swimming just below the surface of his awareness. Geralt could sense torchlight, flickering bright in the shadows of an underground room. He could feel faint breezes against his skin, cool and damp and drying the blood splattered along his hands and forearms. He could hear a heartbeat pattering far too quickly and breaths rapid and pained.

With the speed of shattering glass the world resolved into something he recognized, even if it didn’t make sense. Prison bars, although the door to the cell was left open just in front of him. A staircase just beyond, the stone steps well worn. There was a knife in his hands, one of his own, the blade slick with crimson. Human blood, not monster.

Where was he? How did he get here? Most importantly, why was he here?

The heartbeat, the breathing, the reek of fear and vomit and bloody copper, was right behind him. Geralt turned.

Only instinct beat into him over decades kept him from dropping the blade in his hand, because bound and beaten in the cell behind him was Jaskier. His head was dipped towards his chest, slumped forward against the pull of restraints tying him to the chair. His clothes were torn and slashed and soaked in blood. Whoever had done this to him knew what they were doing, and Geralt felt anger spark like fire deep in his stomach.

“Jaskier.” He needed to know whether the man was still conscious or not.

At the sound of his name the bard shuddered. “Please,” he whispered, far too softly for ordinary hearing to pick up.

Geralt took a few steps closer, put a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder to push him upright. And was shocked when he flinched away hard from the contact, gasping with pain as he did so.

“Jaskier. I’m going to get you out of this.”

“Please, leave me alone, I’m sorry.” The words tumbled together, the frantic pleading of a man who didn’t believe he would be heeded.

Geralt growled low in his throat. Whoever had done this would pay, he would make sure of it. “Jaskier, it’s me, Geralt.”

Jaskier shook his head, mumbled pleas and apologies still falling from split lips.

The lack of recognition unsettled Geralt, hazy memories pinging in his head. He shoved them aside. Once he got Jaskier out of… wherever they were he could worry about things like blood loss and concussions. Stepping around behind, he knelt to examine the bindings. Rope, rough and thick and blood soaked; Jaskier’s wrists were rubbed raw from his struggling against it. But easy enough to cut through with the knife Geralt still held. 

Every time the flat of the blade brushed Jaskier’s skin he tensed, his pleas devolving into worldless whimperings. Geralt grit his teeth and worked as quickly as he could. When the rope finally snapped Jaskier pitched forward off the chair, Geralt just managing to catch him before he landed face first on the stone floor.

“No more, Geralt, please, I’m sorry,” Jaskier begged, voice tight with pain and terror.

Geralt could only blame the lingering effects of whatever it was that still clung to him for being so godsdamned slow at putting the pieces together. The wave of disgust and fury that crashed over him when he did was so strong for several moments he couldn’t even look at Jaskier. All he could see was red.

He remembered the lord of Lestovo, Lord Godefri, he remembered being invited to his manor for a contract, some wraith or other. He remembered the lord’s “assistant”, green eyes and smiling that fake smile while Chaos had danced around him. Sorcerer. And then everything faded into half broken fragments and misty recollection, like a half remembered dream.

Like a half remembered nightmare.

“I must say I’m disappointed you didn’t finish the job.” The voice snapped Geralt back to the present. Standing just beyond the doorway to the cell was Godefri himself, staring at the bloody mess that was Jaskier with an air of detached disgust. “But then again, what can one expect from a witcher?”

“What the fuck did you make me do,” Geralt snarled.

“I tasked you with exterminating a pest. That is what you do, isn’t it?”

There were two guards standing behind Godefri, armed and armored. Geralt didn’t have his swords, wasn’t wearing his armor, didn’t know where any of his gear was. But he had a knife, and that was enough.

The lord of Lestovo died choking on his own blood as Geralt slit his throat, joining the two other fresh corpses at the witcher’s feet.

He found his gear, tucked away in a corner of the small, two cell jail, along with Jaskier’s lute, still safe in its travel case. Doning the armor took far too long for his liking, but he wouldn’t be able to carry both it and Jaskier out of here. And he would have to carry Jaskier.

The bard was curled on the floor of the cell, knees drawn to his chest, ragged breathing edging towards sobs. Geralt approached cautiously, hands hovering for a moment. There would be no easy way to do this.

Jaskier screamed when Geralt picked him up, his voice rough and cracking. Geralt wasn’t sure whether it was from pain or from fear. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Weakly Jaskier tried to fight back, shoving at Geralt’s chest as he began crying in earnest.

Geralt wanted to offer reassurance, wanted Jaskier to stop crying, wanted the twisting, strangling sensation in his lungs to stop. But he knew his words wouldn’t be heeded. Besides, his tongue felt like lead in his mouth, heavy and useless. He was a witcher, he was half monster himself. He lived under the shadow of fear, lived with blood on his hands. Why did this matter more or less than anything else? What was one more condemnation stacked against every sin he had committed? 

The manor was empty as Geralt made his way through. It raised his hackles far more than the fight out he had been preparing himself for. Magic hung in the air, thick as honey, the pervasive sense of wrongness following like the echoing of his footsteps. Until standing in the front hall was the sorcerer.

Pale green eyes met his, and Geralt felt his lips pull back in a snarl. Had Jaskier not been a worryingly still weight in his arms, he would’ve drawn steel and ran the man through right then and there.

The sorcerer held up in hands in a gesture of peace. “I have no quarrel with you, White Wolf. I owed Godefri a favor, that was all. My debt is paid and you are free to go.”

“You made me do this.”

“You were supposed to kill him. It was only your resistance to magic that kept you from doing so. I would count myself lucky if I were you.” With that, the sorcerer stepped into a conjured portal and disappeared.

Geralt ground his teeth and made for the stables.

With whatever spell the sorcerer had put on the household ending as he fled, and with the lord of the town dead in his own basement, Geralt thought it best to get out of Lestovo as quickly as possible. Which ordinarily wouldn’t have meant much to him at all, except Jaskier needed a healer, needed a proper bed, and the next town was days away.

There was nothing for it but to keep riding.

Jaskier had passed out somewhere along the line, now little more than a dead weight in front of him in the saddle. But his heart continued, if a little quickly. Geralt kept one ear to pursuit from behind, and one to its steady beat.

They rode until the half moon was dipping towards the horizon, until Geralt felt more or less certain that no one would be following them. Slowing Roach to a walk, he scouted a place for a camp, eventually finding one far enough from the road and tucked into a slight hollow that would mean they wouldn’t be immediately spotted if pursuit came with morning light.

There wasn’t much he could do for Jaskier, not here, not with potions and supplies meant for witchers, not humans. But he could clean his wounds, bandage the worst of them, and there was willow bark for the pain when he woke.

There wasn’t anything he could do for the bruises, already blossoming in dark purples and sickly yellows. There didn’t seem to be anything broken, although his ribs were bound to ache something fierce. His back was a mess of whip welts and cuts, the fabric of his jerkin and the skin underneath both shredded. And then the cuts, placed to maximize pain and minimize blood loss.

Beating, then whipping, then cutting. The memories were hazy but Geralt could remember their outlines. His stomach twisted.

Tended as best he could and dressed in a spare tunic that hung too large off him, Geralt lay out Jaskier’s bedroll and put him into it. He hadn’t stirred at all during the process and now lying silently in false sleep, Geralt couldn’t help but think how wrong it all was. Jaskier was noise and light and movement and color, not this pale, silent specter. 

“I don’t like being used,” he said to Roach as he scrubbed dried blood from his skin. Some of it he knew was Godefri’s and some was his guards, but he couldn’t stop thinking of it as Jaskier’s. “As shitty as everything can be, at least I usually get a choice. And I don’t attack without reason. I don’t prolong anything I don’t have to. I don’t…” He let his words fall into silence, uncertain how to say what he wanted even to Roach.

Jaskier had been afraid of him. Jaskier had been _terrified_ of him. The one idiot human who didn’t have the sense to run the other way when he saw a witcher had reeked of fear. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter but he couldn’t convince the knot in his chest to let go.

He should sleep. The night was passing, and they would need to continue on in the morning. But Geralt couldn’t find it in him to lay down. Meditation, then. It would be enough to keep him going. But as he settled himself, legs tucked beneath him, hands resting loosely on his thighs, he found he couldn’t close his eyes, gaze locked on Jaskier’s still form.

Slowly, with each measured breath, he let go. But the image lingered long after hie eyes had closed.

The pain woke him, his body screaming its abuses pulling him from the void. Jaskier groaned, tears pricking the back of closed lids. Everything hurt. At least that meant he was most likely still alive. Death couldn’t hurt like this.

It was still up in the air whether being alive was a good thing.

“Jaskier.”

The sound of his name in that low rumble had his eyes snapping open and his body struggling to get his feet under him, a task he was forced to give up on as the pain redoubled and pinned him in place.

“Lay still.”

The stars swirled in the sky above, shuddering along with him. How was it that in less than a day, that voice could go from something oddly comforting to something that sent his heart racing like a terrified rabbit?

It wasn’t that Jaskier had never been scared of Geralt before. The witcher was big and imposing and just enough different, just enough wrong from what an ordinary human was that it pinged some old, ancestral part of the brain that warned of dangerous things. And Jaskier had seen him do some truly disgustingly violent things to monsters. But there was a difference between knowing logically and _knowing_. Knowing what it felt like to have a blade wielded by that hand carving into your flesh, knowing the full weight of that stare as it bore down on you like you were something unclean, unfit to draw breath.

He couldn’t help it; as he heard, felt someone kneel next to him, he tried to move away, whimpering as injuries protested.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry.” Words had always been his strength, but it was hours ago that he’d been reduced to begging.

A sigh, heavy and long. “I’m not… I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You did.” It was weak and thin, and Jaskier tensed in preparation for retaliation.

Instead, he felt something light and rough being placed in his hands.

“Willow bark,” Geralt said flatly. “For the pain.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something, and Jaskier took it gratefully.

He wasn’t in Lestovo anymore, he could tell that. Wasn’t in Godefri’s shitty torture basement. It was dark, no torchlight or firelight, the horizon barely beginning to brighten with the first lights of false dawn. But he could feel dried grass prickling under his bedroll, smell its strange warmth in the still air.

A camp, like hundreds of others he and Geralt had made while traveling together and for a moment the sheer normality of it was absurd. Geralt had tried to kill him and now here they were, like nothing had happened at all.

Laughing hurt, and Jaskier knew it was edged in hysteria, but once he started he couldn’t stop.

“Jaskier. Jaskier!”

“Oh my gods, Geralt,” he wheezed, “could you make up your mind, please? Are you going to kill me or not?”

He couldn’t see in the dark, he didn’t have a witcher’s night vision, but somehow he felt the shift, a settling of tension in the quiet.

When Geralt spoke, it was quiet and slow. “That wasn’t me. There was a mage, he… he did something to my mind. Said he had a debt to Godefri.”

Jaskier remembered, remembered screaming in the cell. _“Please, Geralt, this isn’t you! Snap out of it!”_ Remembered begging, pleading, crying for Geralt to stop, to remember, to realize that he was Jaskier and he was human and something had gone horribly wrong. Remembered all of it falling on deaf ears.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

“What did you do to piss of Godefri that badly? Sleep with his wife?”

Jaskier flinched at the rough tone. “No, no, it was… it was a song, that’s all it was.”

“A song?”

“Well, I mean, I did sleep with his daughter but honestly I don’t think he knew about that. At least not before I ran. Yes, a song, a rather catchy song if I do say so myself, about how shit he was.”

“Godefri almost had me kill you over a song?”

“It was really popular.”

Geralt snorted.

Jaskier let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He hated this, hated it almost more than he hated the way his ribs ached with every breath or how his back was nothing but hurt or how his head felt wrong and stuffed with cotton. Geralt wasn’t dangerous, not to him at least. But although his mind was convinced of that, his body remained more stubborn. It would take time, time to heal, time to stop flinching whenever those yellow eyes fell on him, time not to hold his breath at every sudden movement. Jaskier begrudged his body every second it would take. Geralt was… Geralt was his friend, even if the other wouldn’t admit it.

Geralt sighed again. “Next time we’re headed into a town where someone wants to kill you that badly, a little warning would be nice.”

“Right, yes, will definitely do next time.”

The pain had dulled some, enough that the sirens song of sleep was beginning to tug at him again. Jaskier shifted some in a futile attempt to try and lay in a way that didn’t aggravate some wound or other. Useless in the end, as unconsciousness took him again.

Right before he slipped under, he almost thought he heard a low “I’m sorry.” But it was possible he was just dreaming.


End file.
